Santa Fe man arrested in alleged beating

Wednesday

Jun 26, 2013 at 7:08 AMJun 26, 2013 at 7:22 AM

A Santa Fe man with a record of criminal arrests and convictions stretching back to at least 1991 was arrested for allegedly beating a Columbia man badly enough to put him in the hospital with facial fractures.

A Santa Fe man with a record of criminal arrests and convictions stretching back to at least 1991 was arrested for allegedly beating a Columbia man badly enough to put him in the hospital with facial fractures.

Besides facing aggravated assault and simple domestic assault charges in that incident, Robert Eugene Humphrey, 40, was also charged Tuesday with violating probation when he was arrested in April for allegedly choking a woman and striking her several times on the head with a TV set, jail records showed.

Humphrey remained in the Maury County Jail without bond Wednesday, while his alleged victim — Joseph Steele, 49 — was hospitalized under guard in an undisclosed location.

“Some of his facial bones are broken, and there is some internal bleeding in the head, but it’s not bad,” said the injured man’s daughter, Bronte Steele, who declined to discuss the incident further.

About 9:30 p.m. Monday, Maury County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a call from Ryan Dugger, who wanted to report a domestic assault he’d seen at his aunt’s house, 6381 Old Natchez Trace, Santa Fe, across the road from his own, according to an incident report.

Dugger said he had heard yelling at the house and walked over far enough to see his aunt, Patricia Dianne Bennett, 43, her boyfriend Steele, her brother Humphrey, and Bennett’s ex-husband Perry Bennett and daughter on the screened-in porch, the report said.

“Dianne was yelling at (Steele) about an affair of some sort,” Dugger told police, adding that she then slapped his face once with an open hand.

After that, Dugger continued, she told Steele to “go ahead and call the cops, I’m a woman I know what to say, you’ll never get a warrant, and I’ll keep your money if you try,” the report continued. “Ex-husband Perry Bennett also threatened to beat Steele’s (expletive) if he did anything.”

Dugger told deputies Humphrey was also speaking, but too softly for him to hear what he said. Dugger alleged Chelsea Bennett spent the duration of the incident bringing beers to her mother, Diane, the report said. Dugger told deputies Steele was then told to leave, and “went on to say he believes Steele is physically handicapped in some way.”

Dugger later told deputies in a phone call that he heard Dianne Bennett and her daughter discussing and laughing about the incident. Dugger said he was left with the impression that Humphrey had beaten Steele before Dugger walked across the road to investigate the disturbance.

According to the report, Dugger told officials on the phone that Dianne Bennett bragged about her paralegal training and how it would help garner favoritism with judges.

Dianne Bennett declined to be interviewed Wednesday.

When deputies found Steele at his daughter’s home, he was sitting on a couch holding a blood-soaked towel to his face, and his head was severely bruised and bleeding heavily.

The report said Steele’s account of events was mostly the same as Dugger’s, but added that Humphrey had beaten him with his fists, repeatedly punching him on the face and head, and at one point “punched Steele’s glasses from his face,” then stomped on them.

Steele told deputies that Humphrey had also strangled him, and they found bruises on his neck.

EMS took Steele for treatment of his injuries, and deputies obtained warrants for both Humphrey and Dianne Bennett. She was arrested at work late Tuesday morning, booked for domestic assault and released on $1,000 bond.

Earlier Tuesday morning, Maury County Sheriff’s Sgt. Sam Barnes and deputies Jeremy Hight and Marc Craig began searching for Humphrey and found him hiding in the woods near a family member’s home, Barnes said.

Humphrey has a long criminal history, Barnes said, and “there’ve been allegations in the past he was actually laying in wait for officers to come arrest him.

“I’ve been told by a supervisor that in his 20s there were times when deputies were hesitant to go by themselves to arrest him,” Barnes continued. “They always took someone else.”

Barnes said he arrested Humphrey about 2:45 p.m. Tuesday without incident.

Humphrey’s criminal record includes several arrests for aggravated assault, including the April 16 incident in which he allegedly beat a woman on the head with a TV. Clerk’s records at both Maury County Circuit and General Sessions courts list more than 50 cases beginning in 1991 when Humphrey pleaded guilty to assault and possession of an illegal weapon.

He was also arrested multiple times for domestic assault, disorderly conduct, public intoxication, DUI and one case of first-degree murder in which he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of criminally negligent homicide based on self-defense.

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